World under-14 girls’ champion M. Mahalakshmi shocked Grandmaster Sahaj Grover in the second round of the Apollo Engineering College-Commonwealth chess championship here on Friday.
In another big upset, Madhurima Shekhar shocked National champion G. Akash in 40 moves.
Sahaj won a pawn early and kept picking up pawns at regular intervals.
However, Mahalakshmi continued to attack and won using her queen, rook and bishop. Sahaj had misplaced his queen and Mahalakshmi capitalised on this error to win in 41 moves.
Madhurima posts win
In a battle between 16-year olds, Madhurima played the French defence as black and capitalised on Akash’s poor pawn structure to win a rook for knight before winning in 40 moves.
Top seed Tiviakov won both his games while fifth seed Oleksienko crushed S.R. Harikrishna in just 19 moves by threatening mate and the two rooks at the same time to win.
Akshayraj beats Rani
Among the Grandmaster-norm seekers, Akshayraj Kore played the middle game well to win a pawn and went on to beat Rani Hamid of Bangladesh in 52 moves.
In the morning session, Grandmaster Mark Paragua of the Philippines was held by Rohit Vassan, rated 770 Elo below him. Adarsh Shrivastava and Hilmi Parveen, too, created a flutter, drawing with Shyam Sundar and S.L. Narayanan.
Important results (second round): S. Tiviakov (Ned) 2 bt Harsha Bharathakoti 1. V. Pranavananda 1 lost to Ahmed Adly (Egy) 2.
B. Adhiban 2 bt Sumit Grover 1; M. Oleksienko (Ukr) 2 bt S.R. Harikrishna 1.
M. Dzhumaev (Uzb) 2 bt A. Gajwa 1; Pratik Mulay 1 lost to Lalith Babu 2; S.P. Sethuraman 2 bt Sai Vishwesh 1; K. Gopalakrishnan 1 lost to M.R. Venkatesh 2; S. Arun Prasad 2 bt Rohan Ahuja 1.
M. Mahalakshmi 2 bt Sahaj Grover 1; Chakravarthi Reddy 1.5 drew with Ashwin Jayaram 1.5; G. Akash 1 lost to Madhurima Shekhar 2.
